Greenwald uses Bergdahl to hit Obama, Democrats

[jeff47]

46. The big flaw in that timeline

Is it fails to separate US persons.

You, like many other people, assume any spying program includes US persons. Unfortunately, that is not the case. If you look at what Snowden and others actually released, there is exactly 1 "spying" program on US persons. The phone metadata program. Every other program collected on non-US persons, or was a "jealous Ex" abusing their access - and the leaks indicated those were punished.

Spying on phone metadata became legal in 1979 with an overly-broad SCOTUS decision that made phone metadata a run-of-the-mill business record with no privacy protection, and made that business record belong to the phone company.

Wanna stop it? You need a new law making the data private. Demanding Obama stop doesn't really get you anything - some future version of W will happily start again. 'Course there's lots of folks who are quite happy you're directing your anger at the wrong branch of government.

But back to the original point. Why does "US persons" matter? Non-US persons have exactly zero constitutional rights. According to our Constitution, Angela Merkel has no right to privacy from the NSA as long as she is not in US territory or US custody. Wanna change that? Now you need a Constitutional amendment.